Justice committee  I can answer that question. You have hit exactly where we need to be. We need to be getting upstream of this work and we need to stop violence before it begins. There are a lot of promising practices happening across Canada that are prevention programs. Alberta is actually working right now on a primary prevention framework that is being led by my organization.

Justice committee  I'll begin quickly. I'll let you know that I think it's very easy to define. Not only is it easy to define, but we've created a new tool that is being used by family law lawyers, mediators and arbitrators, which is literally four questions clients can answer that will tell us whether or not there was coercive control in the relationship.

Justice committee  I think you've hit the nail on the head. Part of what twigged my understanding of coercive control and why it was so important is that I actually started my career working in a halfway house for women coming out of federal corrections. Although they were there for federal corrections reasons, I would say that the majority of clients who were in the halfway house ended up in conflict with the law because of abusive partners who had coercively controlled them into drug trafficking, prostitution, theft and a whole variety of activities.

Justice committee  My answer is absolutely, yes. I think it has to be done with care and caution. I'm very lucky in that two years ago I got to spend a month and a half in the United Kingdom meeting with the College of Policing and the Crown Prosecution Service to talk about exactly this issue, as they were trying to do training as well as enculturate people to use the law.

Justice committee  Thank you so much. I would be happy to talk about that. What's most important to recognize about coercive control is that it's a pattern of behaviour that is low-level, repetitive, often doesn't involve physical violence and takes away a person's sense of personal agency. They no longer make decisions based on what their own best interests are or what their driving motivators are, but they make decisions based on fear of what the other person in the relationship is going to do to them if they don't make a decision in a certain way.

Justice committee  That's a great question, and it's one that I think we have to be really sensitive in answering to make sure that people have equitable access to whatever it is, whatever solutions we put out there around addressing domestic violence. It's important to note, actually, that coercive control doesn't just relate to domestic violence.

Justice committee  Good afternoon, Ms. Khalid and members of the justice committee. Thank you for having me today and for providing me with the opportunity to discuss a topic I am incredibly passionate about: coercive control as a framework for understanding and addressing violence. I am the executive director of Sagesse Domestic Violence Prevention Society, which is a provincial organization in Alberta that supports individuals, organizations and communities to disrupt the structures of violence.